Death of a Tree

There was no contest
between the tree and the wind.
Like a boxer it wove and lunged,
struck back with hooks
and blows, tangling in a green fury
with the explosions of the storm,
ignoring the embolism
building in its roots,
the breaking apart of its soul,
the web of its embrace to the earth.
Minute by minute, ruined.
The inequity of a vast violence
against a portrait of time,
drawn in the tree’s book of seasons,
fighting to the death its destruction.

It was no contest.
The soil soggy by rain
could no longer support the
tall spruce.
A Colosseum of green
that had tinted the air around it
with jade,
the aroma of a jewel box,
the edge of mysterious eyes
flashing in the shade.

It was no contest,
now and yesterday.
Yesterday, sun and peace.
Thousands of days
lived without cataclysm.
Life ineffable, with the aura
of inviolable goodness,
that which goes on, goes on.
That which lives,
has a reason to live.
Now we live with the treason
of a truth.
Death has a place of its own.
We had a thousand days and
the promise of more in our tree.
But death died itself,
in an instant,
a pyrrhic victory.